Tate Modern director Frances Morris on why the art world is still a boys' club

The appointment of Frances Morris as the head of Britain's Tate Modern was widely applauded when it was announced in January.

A Tate curator since 1988, Morris has staged major shows of Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin and Louise Bourgeois, whose giant Maman metal spider greeted visitors at the opening of Tate Modern in a former power station in 2000. She was also deeply involved in the museum's innovative displays based on genre rather than chronology.

Tate Modern director Frances Morris will deliver the keynote speech at The Forever Now: Contemporary Art Collections in the 21st Century conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art.Credit:James Alcock

"But it's taken me a long time to work my way up the institutional hierarchy, which I suppose typifies the situation for many women," she says. "They're allowed to do great projects and author individual aspects of their work, but to take institutional responsibility has been much more difficult."

Morris regards her accession as Tate Modern's first female director, taking over from Chris Dercon, with some bemusement.

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Frances Morris applied for the role of Tate Modern boss because "I just thought I don't want to work for another director".Credit:James Alcock

"Isn't it ironic?" she asks. "The art world is there to support and celebrate risk-taking and innovation in the intellectual field.

"So you have this kind of radicalism combined with a deep conservatism institutionally."

Morris is in Sydney to speak at The Forever Now: Contemporary Art Collections in the 21st Centuryconference at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The event coincides with the opening of the Today Tomorrow Yesterday exhibition of artworks acquired by the museum since 1989.

Morris says that conservatism extends to the art market, which values the work of male artists far higher than women.

"There are huge numbers of vested interests in the art world and I think that is delaying social change," she says. "But the situation isn't very different from other institutions if you look across the commercial sector."

"I think bias is a big part of it, don't you? Institutional bias, unconscious bias. It is still a boys' club, no question in my mind."

An artistic glass ceiling seems firmly in place in Australia, too. The director of the MCA, Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, is only the second woman to lead a major public art museum in this country following Betty Churcher, who led the National Gallery of Australia from 1990 to 1997.

"On the one hand, women often hold back from applying from a lack of confidence and on the other, those making the appointments don't approach them or overlook them because they are fixated on certain kinds of career paths and are not recognising different kinds of achievements," Macgregor says.

Morris says her career ambitions differed from some of her male colleagues.

"I did not set out at the age of 25 to become a director," she says. "I do know male colleagues whose principal drive was institutional recognition and seniority, not to make the perfect exhibition."

However, she applied for the top job at Tate Modern, which attracts more than five million visitors each year, because "I just thought I don't want to work for another director".

Morris says she believed she could do a better job.

"It's also quite disruptive taking on a new personality," she says. "I've been in my marriage for a very long time and I just didn't want to go through that three or four years of getting to know somebody.

"I didn't want to create a great new relationship in my life."

Morris' speech at the MCA on Thursday will describe how Tate Modern's collection has expanded from a focus on western art to include works from the rest of the world.

"Tate now has a much wider representation of work by women and artists from countries all over the world," Macgregor says. "This has been done is a typically scholarly manner, driven by a serious commitment to reflecting the world today in contemporary art rather than following fashion or commercial imperatives."

Morris says Australia's cultural institutions face similar issues when it comes to lifting their gaze beyond European and North American art.

She says the five-year joint acquisition program between Tate and the MCA, funded by a $2.75 million gift from the Qantas Foundation, will raise the international profile of Australian contemporary art.

The first purchases include Judy Watson's 2005 art book a preponderance of aboriginal blood, two paintings by Gordon Bennett and Vernon Ah Kee's tall man video about the 2004 Palm Island riots.

"One of the exciting things about this project is that I think we will give some of those artists more visibility," she says.

Morris says considerable space in the Tate Modern's new £260 million twisting pyramid-shaped building, which opened in June, is dedicated to lesser-known artists, many of them women.

"It's noticeable that the press really picked up on those bodies of work because they were so compelling," she says.

The MCA has hosted taxpayer-funded summer blockbusters featuring work by Anish Kapoor, Chuck Close and Grayson Perry in recent years.

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"Celebrity names are great and useful and they drive footfall," Morris says. "But unknown names, if they're work is really strong and compelling, have that revelation factor.

"Tate Modern over the years has been a great place for people to make discoveries."